No winners

Perhaps no other cinematic depiction of revolt against colonial rule is so
detailed, vivid, and specific as the 1965 Battle of Algiers (La battaglia
di
Algeri, just reissued in a new print and having limited distribution in
the
US). It's a vivid and very specific recreation of the insurrection against
the French in Algiers in the late Fifties that shows how the French
systematically eradicated that insurrection. It's also a story repeated
with
variations in dozens of parts of the globe now, as then. But as I'm not
the
first to note, it's neither a partisan tract nor a user manual. It was
therefore foolish of the Pentagon to watch it recently as if tips on how
to
control Iraqi `resistance'/'terrorism' were to be found in it, and it has
been equally foolish of the Black Panthers or other revolutionaries to
watch
it seeking tactical information for their struggles. Those tactics did not
succeed; but neither did the effort to quell the independence movement:
the
French won the battle but lost the war. A process that might have
proceeded
peacefully in a matter of months, takes years to happen. The film
documents
the sad foolishness of solving conflicts with violence, the maximum loss
and
suffering on both sides and the protraction of the inevitable outcome.

The insurrection The Battle of Algiers describes was effectively quelled
through the leadership of the bold, methodical French Colonel Mathieu, who
as we see succeeds in eliminating the organizational structure of the
resistance, `triangle' by `triangle', using torture to ferret out names
and
locations of the autonomous `terrorists'/'partisans,' then killing the
`head' of the `worm' their structure represents so it can't `regenerate.'
Once this happens, after a merciless French campaign following a general
strike, the sympathizers in the majority Algerian population are totally
demoralized; but two years later a vigorous national independence movement
`suddenly,' `spontaneously,' springs forth, and not long afterward France
has to grant Algerian independence. It's at this point, rather than at the
moment of Mathieu's momentary triumph, that the film ends.

Gillo Pontecorvo undertook his masterpiece after prodding from the
resistance leader, Saadi Yacef, but he made a film equally sympathetic
toward and critical of both sides. We see as much of the French dissection
of the situation and repression of it (by the police chief, then Colonel
Mathieu) as we see of the `terrorists'/'partisans' planning and execution
of their actions. We see Colonel Mathieu as an appealing macho hero with
moments of noble fair play, a shades-wearing, cigarette puffing veteran
who
moves around with clarity, honesty, and panache; he himself has a
`partisan'
background. The `terrorist'/'rebel' leaders are serious, intensely
committed
men of various types, from the sophisticated intellectual to the young
firebrand. There are no `heroes' here; or, alternately, if you like,
they're
all `heroes.'

Mathieu appears before the press beside the captured `rebel'/'terrorist'
leader - an unusual move in itself - and expresses his respect for the
man's
courage and conviction. The `rebel' leader in this scene is eloquent in
defending `terrorist'/'rebellion' methods such as the use of baskets
filled
with explosives in public places. `Give us your bombs and we'll give you
our
baskets.' Mathieu for his part effectively explains to the journalists the
necessity of torture to short circuit the `rebellion'/'terrorism'. After
this explanation, the film, typically systematic at this point, begins
showing a series of tortures of Algerians being carried out.

The first image we see in the film is the shattered face and body of the
small, tortured Algerian man who's broken down and revealed where Ali `La
Pointe,' the firebrand, the last remaining leader, is hiding. Then we see
the `terrorist'/'terrorist' leader Ali and his closest supporters trapped
like deer in their hideaway, their faces soft and beautiful. The splendid
black and white photography works like William Klein's Fifties and Sixties
images (he's one of the key visual commentators of that period
stylistically) to powerfully capture the edgy soulfulness of the North
African people and their gritty Casbah milieu. Much of the film's power
comes from the way Pontecorvo was able to work, through Saadi Yacef,
directly in the Casbah among the real people - as Fernando Meirelles
worked
in the favelas of Brazil recently with local boys to forge the astonishing
City of God.

The voices, which are dubbed, as was the fixed Italian filmmaking style,
work somewhat less effectively because of obvious disconnects between
mouth
and sound at times, but the French is so analytical and the Algerians'
Arabic so exotic-sounding (even to a student of Arabic) that they work,
and
the insistent, exciting music composed by Pontecorvo himself in
collaboration with Ennio Morricone is a powerful element in the film's
relentless forward movement.

The fast rhythms of the editing are balanced by the stunning authenticity
of
the hundreds of Algerian extras who swarm across the screen: it's in the
crowd scenes that The Battle of Algiers really sings. There are many
superb
sequences of street fighting, of people massing at checkpoints, of the
French victims innocently assembled in public places; and like an
exhilarating coda there is the scene of joyous victory as Algerians
celebrate their independence in the last blurry moments. This is a film
(again, like City of God) of almost intoxicating -- and nauseating --
violence, complexity, and fervor. Pontecorvo's accomplishment, though, is
the way through showing the leaders analyzing and debating the action he
freezes any impulse toward partisanship in its tracks. The evenhandedness
of
the coverage works a Brechtian `Alienation Effect' so you don't get caught
up in rooting for one side or the other.

The sequence of three pretty Algerian women carrying out an operation is a
particularly memorable one -- but only one among many. First they take off
their burqas and cut their hair and doll themselves up French style and
then
they get past the checkpoint into the French quarter to leave handbags
full
of explosives in a bar, a dance club, and an airport lounge. Again
close-ups
of faces in the bar and the jive dancers with jaunty jabbing elbows in the
club show a brilliant use of image and classic editing: first the
innocent,
vulnerable faces, then the explosions. Here our sympathies for the French
victims are fully awakened. Another sequence of Algerians removing bodies
from a building has all the power and sadness of Christ's Passion.

There's no point where as in a conventional thriller we feel excitement
and
sympathy for the perpetrator, because we see the cruelty of the
perpetrator
and the humanity of the victim every time. The Battle of Algiers is a
final
triumphant use of Italian cinematic neorealismo. The killing is observed
neutrally, but with sadness, as part of a stupid game caused by ignorance
and played out compulsively when a political settlement would have been
infinitely better - a stupid game observed with astonishing zest.

Revived thirty-five years later in a new 35-mm. print, its grainy beauty
pristinely vivid, The Battle of Algiers remains a superbly made machine
that
plays out the addictive game of `terrorism,' repression, torture, revolt,
and full-fledged insurrection as effectively now as when it was first
issued. Like any classic, it's of its time and of all time. There's a
lesson
here, but it's not for partisans or colonialists: it's for all
people.

Was the above review useful to you?

173 out of 203 people found the following review useful:

Should be mandatory viewing for every American

"Battle of Algiers" is simply one of the greatest films every made. If film
making can be about truth as well as fantasy, then a movie that includes a
title card telling viewers that there is not one foot of documentary or
newsreel footage in it must deserve viewing.

"Battle of Algiers" contains scenes that seem so real, you suspect that they
couldn't have been staged. When three Algerian women come down from the
Casbah to plant bombs in the French quarter of the city, you can almost cut
the tension with a knife. When the bombs go off, you think they must have
been real bombs. And when you see the devastation they leave in their wake,
you cannot fail to be moved. The massive rebellion in the streets at the
end of the film also seems so real, you sit wondering how many extras must
have been injured filming those scenes.

"Battle of Algiers" combines brilliant photography, crisp direction, an
intriguing plot and some very fine acting. Throw in a terrific music score,
splendid editing, impressive special effects and the best example ever of
docudrama style production and you have a masterpiece of film
making.

But film making is not nearly as important as human life and no film in
general release today says more about America's current involvement in the
middle east and many other parts of the world than this picture about the
French in Algeria, made more than three decades ago.

Every American should view this film, then think about our current
occupation of Iraq.

Was the above review useful to you?

93 out of 96 people found the following review useful:

A savage war of peace.

An historian writing about the Algerian war against the French colonial
authorities entitled his book "A Savage War of Peace". "The Battle of
Algiers" provides many answers to that enigmatic title. It does not
attempt
to show us the entire war but centers on the city of Algiers. Even though
you are told at the beginning that no documentary footage is used it is at
times hard to believe as many of the images you see have a stark and often
unsettling reality to them. Considering that this was a co production
between Algeria and Italy the film is remarkable in that it does not turn
itself a political tirade by taking sides. Instead the camera is a sort of
neutral observer allowing us to witness events that spiraled from
individual
demonstrations to a full scale war of savage intensity. French officers
who
fought the Nazis a few years before degenerated into the mode of their
former enemy while Algerians had no problems exploding bombs that would
kill their own people. The camera shows no heros or villains but humanity
in
its darkest forms. This is a powerful film with superb direction and
cinematography. It truly is one of a kind and once seen will never be
forgotten.

Was the above review useful to you?

75 out of 90 people found the following review useful:

An unforgettable study of occupation and defeat.

In 1962 after more than 130 years of French colonial rule, Algeria became
independent. Gillo Pontecorvo's `Algiers' shows the decade leading to that
liberation in a powerful story about Muslims asserting their rights through
violence, hiding, and plotting in the Kasbah, a demiworld of narrow,
winding, seemingly endless alleys that are the only protection the rebels
have from the eyes of the French. The re-release of the 1965 black and
white film is a convincing story of a people who do not want to be occupied
and will give their lives so their families can one day be
free.

The story centers on a couple of Muslim leaders, the charismatic Col. of the
French forces, and the bombings and shootouts that at one point averaged
just over 4 per day. The film's sympathy is for the Muslims, but the Colonel
has moments of reflection that could be sympathetic, especially with the
revelation that he was a member of the resistance in WWII and may have
suffered in a concentration camp. The director shows the influence of
Italian neo-realists like Roberto Rossellini (`Paisan') by shooting in
documentary style on location, using non-actors (except for the Colonel),
and generally avoiding an agitprop angle.

But the film's sympathy in the end belongs to the occupied people. When 3
rebel women change appearance to look French, infiltrate, and plant bombs,
the irony obvious to American audiences in their current struggle is a
tribute to the strength of the narration and characterization and the
universal dislike of occupation and subjugation.

The torture of the Muslim prisoners is the most poignant relevance to the
recent scandal in Iraq. The Colonel's justification for the practice to
gain life-saving information is classic `ends-justify-the-means' logic still
being used by great nations. In fact, the Pentagon reportedly had seen this
film during the first days of the second Iraq War; some say they learned
nothing from the film, which is an unforgettable study of occupation and
defeat.

Was the above review useful to you?

61 out of 72 people found the following review useful:

Excellent movie

I ask myself why we never see these kind of movies on TV, instead of
airing
again and again the same old lethal weapons, jurassic parks, and other
similar stuff?
This is real cinema, this is why it is considered a form of
art!

With the metaphysical crudeness of black and white, the dramatical facts
of
the Algerian rebellion against the French are accounted. The movie has the
realistic appearance of a chronicle. And there are tons of intellectual
honesty, too.
I mean that there are no white hats VS black hats. You can see terrorists
troubled as they are about to leave a bomb in a cafe. Policemen who
struggle
to save an arabian child from being killed by outraged crowd. Most of all,
I
like the frank words of Colonel Mathieu about the "bad methods" he's using
during interrogations... Watch the movie and you will know.

Was the above review useful to you?

52 out of 59 people found the following review useful:

Great war movie? Yes---and maybe the best POLITICAL movie ever.

I wish I could locate a videocassette of this film--subtitled, not dubbed.
The first time I saw it, I was a little put off by what I thought was a
pompous disclaimer that "not one foot" of documentary footage had been used.
But, in light of the finished product, it's a remarkable statement. If a
film has better captured the harsh and ugly realities that are an inevitable
part of a true revolutionary movement, I never saw it. It is greatly to its
credit that one never gets a sense of "good guys vs. bad guys" here--only of
people trapped in a truly impossible set of circumstances, from which no
escape is possible without confrontation and bloodshed. It was depressing to
see this movie in Berkeley in the early 70s, and hear the audience cheer the
"heroic" Algerian revolutionaries while booing the "villainous" French, in
view of the great pains that had been taken to present a balanced viewpoint.
This film is thrilling, heartbreaking, thought-provoking, and
beautiful--sometimes by turns and sometimes all at once. If you haven't seen
it and it show up anywhere in the vicinityh, drop everything and go--and
pray that it's subtitled and not dubbed. (There are dubbed prints and, as is
usually the case, dubbing pretty nearly wrecks it.) This is a masterpiece.

Was the above review useful to you?

41 out of 49 people found the following review useful:

Masterpiece with Historical Accuracy

Capturing a historic incident/moment with extraordinary accuracy makes a
film truly beautiful, painful, and masterful. With the tradition of
Italian
Neo Realism and French New Wave - i.e. shooting in location and casting
nonprofessional actors, The Battle of Algiers harshly seals the ugly
realities of both French Legion and Algerian Guerillas - i.e.
indiscriminate
bombs, tortures, and scapegoats. Ennio Morricone composed one of his early
successful scores.

Was the above review useful to you?

41 out of 55 people found the following review useful:

A Brilliant War Film...

Just when I thought I was starting to hate every movie in sight, I had the
amazing priveledge to watch "the Battle Of Algiers" which is this amazing
account of the oppression of the Algierian people by the French in the
1950's.

When the movie starts, we see 4 people hiding from the French Army. Then all
of a sudden, this amazingly haunting music starts, and we're told the story
in flashback of how the Algierian people tried to revolt against the French
Soldiers.

From what I understand, the movie uses no documentary footage, which is
amazing as some of the scenes in the movie must have taken a great deal of
effort to produce., There are some pretty amazing crowd scenes and the
explosion scenes are just breathtaking.

Also, I guess some of the actual revolutionaries are in the film as well.
They are pretty hard to point out as all of the acting here is amazing,
very realistic.

So, looking for a war movie? Dammit, don't go for Private Ryan, go to
Algiers.

Was the above review useful to you?

49 out of 73 people found the following review useful:

learn from the history it conveys

Author:from United States9 May 2005

If one has not seen this film, one cannot begin to imagine Pontecorvo's
extraordinary achievement. The acting is so natural and convincing that
many viewers and even some critics assumed that the movie was a
documentary. Only a master director could have taken this raw acting
material and gotten such performances out of it. And despite his
leftist viewpoint, Pontecorvo neither ridicules or demonizes the
French, as does Michael Moore the Americans in his recent putative
documentaries Bowling at Columbine and Farenheit 9-11 - though I do a
disservice to Pontecorvo to compare his work to that of Moore.

See this movie now that it has been released on DVD in the United
States and learn from the history it so brilliantly conveys.

Was the above review useful to you?

13 out of 14 people found the following review useful:

Best historical film ever?

Battle of Algiers might well be the best historical film ever. It
stands out as a splendid work of art, as an extremely accurate
depiction of a specific time and place, as a political hymn to
independence, and as a thought-provoking philosophical reflection on
violence, and on the relationship between ends and means.

It depicts the crucial years 1956-1957 in the Algerian war of
independence from French colonial rule: the leaders of the
independentist FLN decide to make Algiers a battlefield through strikes
and terrorism in order to shake colonialism and to unite Algerians. The
French respond to this urban guerilla with a ruthless control of space,
separating European and Arab (the 'casbah') parts of the city, and with
a brutal hunt of the FLN leaders through the torture of lesser
militants. The French paratroops under gen. Massu, col. Bigeard and
cdt. Aussaresses (blended in the film into a synthetic and fictitious
character, col. Mathieu) eventually 'win' the battle of Algiers, but
they end up 'losing' Algeria, as their repression has only fueled
nationalism. The film therefore ends with the vision of Algerian crowds
demanding independence ('Istiqlâl') as they march through the streets
of Algiers in 1960.

While this is an accurate enough analysis of such a complex war (even
though interestingly de Gaulle is absent from the film as it intends to
show how independence was conquered, not handed from above by French
authorities) it is also a metaphor, as the film works on many different
levels.

It is a masterpiece of editing and cinematography. The combined use of
space and music is stunning: when the french paratroops take possession
of the Casbah, literally filling up the frame, gaining control of the
streets, rooftops, hallways, courtyards, their superbly choreographed
movements are underlined by a haunting theme by Morricone & director
Pontecorvo. In these sequences he rivals not only Rossellini but
Eisenstein.

It is also strongly influenced by the New Wave in its manner of filming
faces of protagonists. Some of the most beautiful moments in the film
(as the beginning in Ali's hiding hole, or the scenes before the
explosions in the bars) consist of protagonists' faces, victims,
perpetrators, bystanders, shot in close up, in a beautiful black and
white, without comment or voice-over: their common humanity is shown as
well as the determination, the inner flame of those fighting for
independence.

I would disagree with other reviewers saying the movie is is unbiased:
the film was commissioned and encouraged by the new-born Algerian
state, and Yacef Saadi, a leader in the war of independence appears in
prominent role. While the violence of both sides is coolly examined,
the film justifies that of the Algerians, if only by showing (in a
slightly dishonest way) that it always responds to the violence of the
French. This question of precedence (who started to be inhuman?),
though in the end quite pointless, has long poisoned mutual
understanding between French and Algerian memories of the war. Another
bias, explained by the FLN financing and staging, is the almost
complete absence in the film of the middle ground, those neither in the
terrorist FLN or in the paratroops, desiring to live in peace. They
have existed, in both sides, as the examples of writer Albert Camus and
his friend Mouloud Ferraoun show. This is quite understandable as it
might not fit in the epic text depicted in realistic manner by
Pontecorvo. However, in the film, the Algerians that are not committed
to war are shown to be gangsters and pimps: this is a minor flaw of the
film and its only touch of propaganda.

All that said, the film is a stunning visual, historical and ethical
masterpiece. Sadly and ironically, it capture a fiery desire for
liberty at the very time (1965) a military coup by Boumediene overthrew
Ben Bella in Algeria, repressing liberties for the decades to come.
Most of all, it is one of the most potent depictions of and reflections
on violence (in the twin and extreme forms of terrorism and torture) to
be seen on screen.

The most powerful image of the film remains the vision of a FLN
militant broken by torture and forced to confess the hiding place of
his chief. His haunted look, exhausted stance, empty eyes, grotesquely
dressed in a paratroops' uniform, stand as an indictment of
colonialism.